The macroevolutionary dynamics of pharyngognathy in fishes fail to support the key innovation hypothesis
Samuel R Borstein, Michael P Hammer, Brian C O’Meara, Matthew D McGee · 2024
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Description
Samuel Borstein and co-authors tested a famous claim about fish evolution. The claim is that a special second set of jaws in the throat acted as a key innovation, unlocking new foods and driving bursts of species. This throat-jaw system, pharyngognathy, appears in species-rich groups such as cichlids and wrasses. The team combined whole genomes with large ecological and evolutionary datasets to check the story.
Genomes clarified the family tree but also showed tangled shared ancestry, suggesting the innovation evolved fewer times than assumed. With the corrected tree, lineages with throat jaws showed no consistent shift in feeding ecology and no faster diversification than relatives without them. The authors conclude the key innovation label fails here, and warn that genomic evidence must anchor such claims.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Samuel R Borstein, Michael P Hammer, Brian C O’Meara, Matthew D McGee |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 66 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |